Design and Art Australia Online

cartoonist, worked in Sydney early this century. According to his advertisement (original in uncatalogued Norman Lilley collection, Mitchell Library [ML]), probably published in Beckett’s Budget c.1910, he specialised in caricaturing theatrical and vaudeville performers and appears to have regularly appeared on the stage himself drawing lightning caricatures. 'Val Mack, Komical Karicaturist’, shows a comic bearded man at easel painting straight head of handsome man (ML uncatalogued drawer), and states: '“ARTISTS! Why not get a CARTOON of yourself or act, for the Vestibule?/ I’LL DRAW THEM FOR YOU.”/ MY ORIGINAL ADS. WILL BOOM YOU.”/ A.V.A. SYDNEY/ 'SAY! HAVE YOU SEEN MY ACT? IF NOT YOU’VE GOT TO HUSTLE/ LEAVING SHORTLY FOR THE STATES’.

Mack contributed to Vumps in 1908 and signed the cover of the sole (August) issue with the other contributors, including Claude Marquet. The Norman Lilley cartoon collection (ML uncat. drawer 19) has his original cartoon The Mainstays of Melodrama ’1908, featuring 'The Honorable Hero perennial but still forg..’, 'The Heroine…’, 'The Villain…’, 'The Adventuress/ In league with the villain,/ She has a fondness for saying “Curse him”./ The Comedy Cop who turns up in the fifth act with the …’ (included in State Library of New South Wales Artists and Cartoonists in Black and White show, 1999). Another of two men, drawn in a strong graphic style reminiscent of the Beggarstaff Brothers and other English artists of the time, was presumably done for the same paper. Did he go to the US as he claimed he was about to do? Apparently unrecorded if he did.

Writers:

Kerr, Joan

Date written:

1996

Last updated:

2007